Incorrect please try again Enter the words above:Enter the numbers you hear: <input type="text" id="recaptcha_response_field" name="recaptcha_response_field">/></input> Get another CAPTCHA Get an audio CAPTCHA Get an image CAPTCHA Help

Chevy Volts Trending Past 200 Million Gas-Free Miles

Jeff CobbJune 4, 2013

Tweet

Email

Print

Go Back

Print this page

Photo Gallery

Sorry there are no photos! Hide

Basing info from only some participating Volt owners’ OnStar data feed, General Motors has kept a running tally of total EV miles driven, and the number rapidly ticking forward is nearly 200 million miles.

In actuality, the Volt – which operates as an electric car for an EPA-estimated 38 miles before gas power takes over – has already crossed 200 million miles given not all Volts on the road are contributing to the total shown at Chevrolet’s Web site.

Gasoline saved by the cars that are being tracked to date, Chevrolet says, is in excess of 10.42 million gallons. At today’s national average premium gasoline price of $3.95 per gallon, this is in excess of $41.2 million in fuel Volt drivers did not have to spend.

Or, as GM whimsically puts it to drive the point home, this is enough money to buy 80 acres of a private desert island.

However you slice it, the total number of Volts on U.S. roads to date are in excess of 38,600 since its December 2010 launch.

What’s more, the money and gas savings also speak to environmental savings as well. Not burning 10.42 million gallons of gas prevented hydrocarbons from being spewed into the atmosphere. And, this is also that much less gasoline needed from petroleum imported from foreign sources, which means a modest step toward energy independence.

Those are some of the positives, and naysayers continue to pour on the negatives to the degree that they can, with points varying in their degree of validity.

It is a controversial subject, and not one we want to tackle here. Since the launch of the new breed of U.S.-market electrified plug-in cars, over 100,000 have been sold and advocates hope now that the proverbial horses have been let free from the stable, there will be no calling them home – or later extinction.

The Volt and other electric cars are seen as a small, if halting step, toward curtailing or even ending one day the “addiction to oil” – something the last eight U.S. presidents have predicted would come not long after their term ended, but which still has no certain end in sight.